That's about the best advice I've ever read, hands down.
     Deciding what the most liberating thing I've ever read has been just about as easy.  It was something I came across once in a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., essay.  I'm not sure exactly when it was, nor exactly what the essay may have been called.  It doesn't matter.  His point - simple though it may have been - freed my mind in a way few words other than "Next!" at the methadone clinic ever have.
     Here it is: There really aren't four seasons.  There are actually six.  These are called Winter; Opening; Spring; Summer; Fall; and Closing.
     Mr. Vonnegut explained this at some length.  I forget much of what he had to say.  It's even possible that I've put Fall and Closing in the wrong order.  No matter.  The important thing I came away with was the idea that four seasons are just too few to capture all the regularly repeating nuances of the year as I've experienced them all my life in this here American Midwest.
     Indeed, I now believe that each year contains no fewer than 1,095 discrete seasons that we're merely too busy, too distracted, and too unobservant to notice.
     And I vehemently suspect that the elementary teacher's unions are working overtime to keep it that way, lest their members be called upon to change their bulletin boards some three times a day before lunch.

     It troubles me to be so far out of touch with reality because my mental channel selector lacks a fine tuning knob.  I've tried to do better - to pick up on the weaker seasonal signals bombarding me all the time - but the best I've been able to do to break out of the oppressive, arbitrary, four-seasoned box my culture has me in is this:  March is a Winter month, and August is a Fall one.
     And I've had to put up two huge Post-It notes on my eyeglasses to remember even that much.... 
     Sigh.

     Looking around me today, however, makes it clear once again just how true it is that August belongs to Fall.  I can only wonder how clear it would have been weeks ago if I didn't have these damn Post-It notes blocking my view.  Even so, I can recall the drop in temperatures that followed July's passing; the disappearance of fireflies; the changing of the first leaves; the increase in lazy clouds and gentle rains; the noticeably expanding nights; the longer shadows cast by a sun able to climb fewer and fewer stairs with each passing day; and of course the start of the new school year.  That my flower garden has become an old age home for withering impatiens and zinnias is just par for the course, really, however much those lush August calendar photos attempt to convince me that I was wrong to have tried singing to my pet foliage back in June.
     Now the fogs have arrived.  Morning fogs, sometimes (like last night and today) obvious escapees from the moors of "The Hound of the Baskervilles."  Could barely see the neighbor's house this morning, or across the street, even before I had put on my glasses. 
     Amazing what a little warm ground and cool air can do, given the right humidity to play with.  Given the same humidity, about all I can do is spit.  And just for the record, "NO - my spit has NEVER caused area schools to start off with a two-hour delay, let alone cancel altogether."  I was going to add that if you think otherwise, you must be a hothead reading a cool entry and becoming lost and confused in the sort of dense mental fog that can produce, but I just took the temperature of this entry and it turns out that it's decidedly lukewarm.  Thus does science once again destroy a comforting delusion.
     Boohoo.

     Anyway, August is a Fall month.  I mean, it's positively autumnal, you know?  That's all I'm trying to say.  It just takes me awhile, what with all this spit in my mouth that I don't know what to do with, now that it's obviously of no use when it comes to closing the schools. 
     Any suggestions for what I might do with it instead?
     Mmmm, just the thought of what you might say is making me drool....! 
     I'll be out watering those zinnias until someone thinks of something even better.
     Or maybe putting my money where my mouth is?
     "STOP!" my Muse exclaims, hitting me with three restraining orders.
     Dan stops.